Rove quote delights Dems

It’s not every day that Democrats embrace the wisdom of Karl Rove, but the Barack Obama campaign is e-mailing around a comment he made to Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday.”

With the commercials of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) under attack for falsehoods, Rove said that both sides in the presidential race have “gone one step too far” — in McCain’s case, by “attributing to Obama things that are … beyond the 100 percent truth test.”

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"When Karl Rove is questioning the legitimacy of your dishonest tactics, you really need to take a moment of self-reflection," Obama spokesman Hari Sevugan said when the campaign e-mailed the quote to reporters for the second time in 80 minutes.

So expect to hear surrogates for the Illinois senator out on the airwaves saying, “EVEN Karl Rove. …”

But he said it about both campaigns.

Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor, echoing Obama campaign language from Saturday, quickly blasted out a statement saying: “In case anyone was still wondering whether John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest campaign in history, today Karl Rove — the man who held the previous record — said McCain’s ads have gone too far.”

In response, Rove said: “Of course, they fail to say anything about the fact I said they were even more misleading.”

Indeed, Rove had first said that Obama’s riff about putting lipstick on a pig was “inappropriate” and “maybe it was unconscious, but it was a deliberate slap at [Alaska] Gov. [Sarah] Palin.”

Since leaving the White House, Rove has multi-tasked as a book author, Fox News analyst, Newsweek columnist and frequent contributor to The Wall Street Journal.

Here is his exchange with Wallace:

WALLACE: Do you have any problem with what McCain is doing by, for instance, saying — which a lot of people thought was kind of made up — that Obama was smearing Palin?

ROVE: Well, first of all, I do think that the lipstick remark was an inappropriate — and maybe it was unconscious, but it was a deliberate slap at Gov. Palin.

The only time this word has intruded in recent months in the campaign was in her self-deprecating remark at the convention. So for him to use the lipstick remark less than two weeks after she used it struck me as too much of a coincidence not to have been a deliberate attack.

But, look, both campaigns are making a mistake, and that is they are taking whatever their attacks are and going one step too far. We saw this this week, for example, in the Obama ad where he makes the point, a legitimate point, that John McCain came to the United States Congress in 1982 and that he has been a longtime Washington insider.

But they then say he doesn't even know how to use a — you know, doesn't send e-mail. Well, this is because his war injuries keep him from being able to use a keyboard. He can't type. You know, it's like saying he can't do jumping jacks.

Well, there's a reason why he can't raise his arms above his head. There's a reason why he doesn't have the nimbleness in his fingers.

WALLACE: All right, and for fair game, what is McCain doing that goes a step too far?

ROVE: Well, McCain has gone in some of his ads — similarly gone one step too far, and sort of attributing to Obama things that are, you know, beyond the 100 percent truth test.

They don't need to attack each other in this way. They have legitimate points to make about each other.